


Placeholder

by KathSilver



Category: The Maze Runner (Movies), The Maze Runner Series - All Media Types, The Maze Runner Series - James Dashner
Genre: Angst, Canon Compliant, Coping, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Grief/Mourning, Heavy Angst, Hurt/Comfort, Introspection, M/M, Major Character Death would be canon Newt and Ben, Safe Haven (Maze Runner), There is NO FLUFF HERE, This is not Happy, but they're dealing, just read it, odd types of therapy, they aren't in love, trust me - Freeform, writing this was hard
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-10
Updated: 2018-11-10
Packaged: 2019-08-21 12:10:33
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,944
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16576208
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/KathSilver/pseuds/KathSilver
Summary: Or, 'I'm not him.'Gally loves Ben. Thomas loves Newt.They each feel like they killed the love of their life, yet there they were in the Safe Haven expected to live and move on. What starts as coping turns into the two of them finding a way to navigate both life and their grief without falling to pieces.They don't quite get it right, but they do it together, and that's what matters, right?





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**Author's Note:**

> Some elements of this story you might recognize if you have read 'Crumpled Papers' and 'Burned Pages', so don't be surprised. This all came from a discussion on Discord about how you could have canon newtmas, benally, AND thomally. And then Faia and Manda gave us so many feels. 
> 
> Anyways so like here I am 7 months later actually writing the damn thing. Enjoy?

He had no choice, really.

Had nothing left other than to keep moving, keep pressing onward, keep shaping the world with his hands because the moment his hands stilled, they’d shake.

Thomas was afraid that if his hands started to shake then the tremor would flow into the rest of him until his soul was knocked out of his flesh, and it only had a tenuous hold to his body in the first place.

Don’t think about bodies.

Move.

And so it went.

He cooked, he hunted despite the way a knife felt in his hands would send his stomach roiling, he washed clothes, and he mended broken supplies. He appeared anywhere that he might be of use, which was nowhere honestly, because his only life skills were leading groups of people to their deaths and fighting in a war.

Neither of those were in need.

Some days he would wander.

He’d cross the dunes and look out across the sea, take new paths and map out the area.

Those days were both a blessing and a curse because no one went with him. He’d have the whole day to himself, to keep to his thoughts, without the burden of maintaining his mask of coping. Thomas was left alone with his memories and could get lost in his own head as much as he wanted as long as he could still find his way back to the camp.

Camp.

His friends made it both harder and easier to exist, because they were the only reason why he stayed. Everything he’d fought for suddenly wasn’t worth it anymore—what was the point of peace when his own mind wouldn’t give him any? Every night when he fell asleep, he would be back in the middle of a burning city, doing a thousand things differently in a vain hope at redemption. Most nights all he did was futile, no matter what he tried it always ended with a blade and a last gasping shudder of air.

Those nights were the good nights.

The most unbearable were the nights where he would do something _right_ only to wake up cold and alone, when in his dream he’d shared the arms of another.

Of the only other.

 

 

 

Somehow, he found himself building things. He didn’t know how it happened, one day he just woke up and followed the crowd of people to wherever they were going and ended up in front of Gally. Gally who had a skill, had a place, had somehow survived when others hadn’t—despite dying. For a brief moment he thought he might be turned away, unwelcome, but the moment passed, and he was given tools, and watching the physical results of his labor manifest into something _worthwhile_ stirred some cracked and dried up part of his insides.

But that’s not the important part, not what mattered.

What mattered is what happened when the days work was done, and Thomas’s traitorous hands were already covered in blisters and raw, when Gally pulled him aside and led him away.

He was led to a hut off on its own, much like Thomas’s, and a stack of odd logs that wouldn’t be of much use as anything other than firewood.

Thomas blinked in confusion but before he could ask the obvious question, Gally gave him a mallet and pointed at a raised log.

“Hit it,” Gally said.

Thomas didn’t hesitate, he struck the wood as hard as he could and was startled at the flicker of…. Something… that echoed inside of himself.

“Again,” Gally said.

So Thomas struck once more. Gally ordered Thomas to hit the wood until his voice ran hoarse, until Thomas’s shoulder had gone so far past hurting that it had nearly gone numb. He stopped hearing Gally calling for the strike of mallet on wood long ago and instead soldiered on mechanically, as if to break the motion would be to break apart completely.

There were no coherent thoughts, Thomas wasn’t picturing a face, he was nothing. He was a strike against wood and an echo in a strange landscape. He was nothing. He was movement and pattern and—

He was breaking. The pattern stuttered and it was like letting loose a stampede of energy Thomas hadn’t even known he’d had—he struck harder and faster and more erratically until there was no more mallet it was his feet kicking out at the wood and he was screaming and picking the log up in his hands and throwing it as far as he could and… collapsing in on himself.

While Thomas gasped for breath, he flicked a glance over to Gally, who hadn’t stopped him. The man was a statue in the fading light, stoic save for the wetness on his cheeks and the emptiness in his eyes. Gally offered no words, no comfort save for his presence. Instead he offered a gift far greater: a nod.

And with that nod came a rush of something Thomas hadn’t actually known he’d needed—Validation. Acknowledgement that whatever it was Thomas was doing, it was acceptable.

And with that nod some tiny, forsaken part of Thomas opened a world-weary eye and began to wake up again.

 

 

 

They didn’t talk about it.

In a way it was almost as though it hadn’t happened except for the way people noticed Thomas differently the next day. Or perhaps it was he who noticed them more than he had before, like the world was a little sharper in clarity than it had been, the people more real and worthwhile.

He could taste food, a little. It tasted less like the ash of the city the moment it met his tongue, though he still couldn’t bring himself to eat all of it.

Frypan gave him a smile for trying.

Thomas pretended not to see the shock in Frypans eyes when Thomas made an attempt to smile back.

Minho noticed enough of a difference to try and speak with him, to ask a question that had been on his mind, to speak of the person Thomas spent all of his time both thinking and trying not to think about. Their conversation that night wasn’t long, but it happened. It was real, wasn’t a façade, wasn’t an echo of what they once were and was instead a glimpse at who they might be.

Looking out at the empty blackness of the night sky as they spoke, Thomas thought that maybe he could try to be okay.

 

 

 

He should have known it wouldn’t last.

 

 

 

Whatever had woken within him when he struck the wood didn’t last long before it was smothered by the weight of the person who wasn’t there; he could feel himself shutting down.

Could feel himself not caring.

But he’d made a promise, and that promise wasn’t to watch as his friends, his family, tried to put back together the pieces of themselves while at the same time trying to hold Thomas together.

Thomas stared at Brenda’s retreating back and slumped shoulders, making a valiant attempt at trying to conjure whatever it was she’d said to him, to make a response, to go after her, to do _something_. But like so many other times in his life, Thomas was frozen inside his skin, unable to move when it counted.

Later, in perhaps a desperate move to keep from hurting the others around him even more, Thomas found himself on his way to Gally’s. What he’d hoped to find there he wasn’t sure, maybe just a mallet and a log, but he wasn’t expecting to see Gally outside. Striking.

Again.

And again.

And again.

And again.

There he was, going through the same motions as Thomas had before, striking with the mallet until that sound could drive out even the screams playing on repeat in Thomas’s mind. Thomas was transfixed, frozen once more at the sight of Gally as he neared the breaking point.

Thomas didn’t flinch when Gally shouted, didn’t blink when Gally chucked the remnants of wood over the little hill the hut sat on to where they would presumably crash into the waves, didn’t shy away when Gally’s fevered gaze turned and found his own.

Instead he nodded, and Gally shuddered and gave a nod of his own, and Thomas could see a little clearly again.

Despite how exhausted he must have been, Gally stood and moved his last log into position. He offered the mallet to Thomas with a white-knuckled grip that clearly stated he needed another round but was willing to give it up so Thomas might find whatever strange solace could be found in that simple dance of mallet on wood, but Thomas declined. Instead he opted to stand witness, to give his own validation, to let the steady beating sound keeps the ghosts at bay for at least another few moments, to let the salt stinging his cheeks mingle with the moisture in the air and force his eyes to open once more.

 

 

Before he went to sleep that night, Thomas went for a walk.

When he woke up in the morning, Gally found that his woodpile was full.

 

 

If Thomas were in any position to keep track of time, he’d know that they carried on like that for over a year without saying any more to each other than ‘strike’ and ‘again’. Sometimes it would be every night that Thomas would make the trek to Gally’s hut, sometimes he could go for weeks before his lungs crashed in tight and Minho would be speaking without Thomas ever hearing a word.

Then one night, before Thomas began his ritual of reading the Letter like it was the spell to open up a gateway to those of the fallen and Thomas need only read it enough times to find the key, there was movement outside of his thin walls.

It was Gally, who’d never found his way to Thomas’s hut before, though he stood staring not at Thomas’s door but instead at the black waves in such utter desolation that it stole the warmth right out of Thomas’s skin.

Thomas tucked the Letter safely inside the necklace and approached the man, at first unsure of what he should do.

The answer came from the sudden motion of his arms when they reached out and gently pushed Gally in the direction of the ocean. Gally moved forward, slowly, not fighting but not anywhere near their shared plane of reality, and Thomas pushed him again.

And again.

And again.

And again.

The shock of the cold-water lapping at their waists brought a gasp out of Gally at last, and he looked down at Thomas as though he’d never seen him before.

They held each other’s gaze for moments, hours, seconds, before Gally faltered and broke their pattern of silence with a whispered name.

“Ben.”

It made sense, if Thomas thought about it hard enough. Gally’s hatred of him in the beginning, the way Gally had spiraled out of control and into madness so quickly.

He’d been forced to kill Ben, the same way Thomas had…

Gally’s eyes faltered, vulnerability showing in a way that just didn’t make sense when you considered the countless times they’d watched each other fall apart.

And so Thomas pulled himself together and said the name that he hadn’t spoken since that night in the burning city, hadn’t let himself think in the waking hours since he’d accepted that he was gone.

“Newt.”

And it was enough.

 

 

 

He woke to ash, to screams, to confusion, to fear.

Had he truly woken or was he back in the city once more? The flames licked at the sand beneath his feet but that didn’t make sense, there was no sand in the city—

His hut was burning, and Thomas was choking on the ash. He knew he should make for the door, make for some escape; instead Thomas flew to his lone shelf to grasp the wooden figurine that stood guard on top of it, checked that the necklace he never took off still carried its precious cargo.

Arms wrested him out of his hut and into the clean air, Minho and Jorge, but it was Gally who Thomas truly registered first.

Not because of any special connection he had to the man, though months had gone by since they’d revealed the names of those who haunted them, they’d regained their pattern of silence since, but because of what he did.

While Brenda and Sonya fussed over Thomas to make sure he was alright, and Frypan and Harriet fought to douse the flames, Gally checked Thomas’s necklace for the Letter, his hand for the figurine.

And he’d looked every bit prepared to run back inside that hut to grab them if he hadn’t found them safe and sound.

Thinking back, Thomas could remember the explanations of how an out-of-control bonfire and a strong wind had carried winged flame to several huts if he strained, but he would forever associate that night as the moment he’d realized that Gally truly _understood_.

And that Thomas did too; if their positions had been reversed, Thomas would have checked first for the leather wristband, second for a warped piece of metal that Thomas didn’t know the story behind but knew that when he ran his fingers along the smoothed edges the shadows left Gally’s face ever so slightly.

The two of them, they weren’t alone.

 

 

The next night, when the skies darkened and Minho guided Thomas to his hut with an arm around his shoulders and a story of his adventures trying out the surf board he’d spent the past few weeks making with Vince, Thomas stopped at the sight of a lone figure on the opposite end of the campfire.

Gally stood silently, as always in regard to Thomas, but met his eyes and raised an eyebrow in question.

When Thomas pulled away from Minho and walked unfalteringly towards Gally instead, he felt that ever slumbering piece of himself rouse in curiosity, which was new. He’d forgotten what that felt like.

What was worse was that when the gob smacked expression on Minho’s face was too much to bear, and Thomas’s throat gave way to a choking sort of wheeze that had half of the camp staring in awe, Thomas realized that he’d also forgotten what it felt like to laugh.

 

 

The second hammock strung up in Gally’s hut didn’t surprise Thomas at all, of course Gally’d known that Thomas would join him. Despite the fact that they’d never had a real conversation since coming to the Safe Haven, Thomas felt like they knew each other better than anyone else still alive could ever hope to.

On a shelf inside sat the piece of warped metal Gally so often carried, and Thomas placed Chuck’s figurine next to it proudly, though it made him ache inside.

“He found it on his first trip running the Maze,” Gally said softly. How his voice was familiar to Thomas’s ears despite never really hearing it, Thomas would never know. “Brought it back for me and said that someday it’d be the key to us getting out of there.”

“Chuck carved it for his parents, I promised him I’d find them and tell them how much Chuck loved them, and that when I did, I would give them his carving,” Thomas offered in return.

“That night I spent at the doors and banged my fists against them until they bled, hoping that when they opened in the morning he’d somehow still be there.”

“To this day I’m not sure if I’m the one who pushed in the knife or if he was; I don’t know which answer is worse.”

“The day the Maze doors opened and you were still alive inside is the day I wanted to kill you, because why had you survived but he hadn’t? Why you?”

“I still haven’t told Minho exactly how he died.”

“I see him every night in my dreams.”

“I see him every night in my dreams.”

 

 

 

They fell into a new routine after that.

Each night after they traced their beloved’s names on the memorial and retreated to their hut, they would speak and get to know one another. They’d break down and strike with the mallet, take trips down into the cold ocean waves, or sit in a catatonic silence with one another. Thomas learned that you read Gally through his hands, not his face.

His face could show whatever emotion he wanted to show, or lack thereof, but his hands were what he couldn’t hide. When the reached out for a person that wasn’t there anymore, Thomas stepped in so that Gally wasn’t grasping at empty air.

Gally learned how to tell when Thomas’s lungs were closing in on themselves, when he was choking on ash and blood, and the subtle differences that told whether calm words or physical action would clear his airways again.

Thomas made Gally talk to other people.

Gally made Thomas confess to Minho.

They made each other wake up in the morning; if they didn’t, then they’d be leaving the other more alone.

 

 

“So are we ever going to talk about it?” Minho asked. He spoke without looking at Thomas, focus instead on the fishing net the two of them were mending during their spare time.

“Talk about what, how Brenda is clearly pregnant, and you still haven’t told Jorge? Because that sounds like a fun conversation to have, let’s do it,” Thomas replied.

The smack on the back of his head was not only predictable, but well earned.

“You and Gally, shuckface.”

Their slang wasn’t used as often anymore, not with so much time having passed, but the four of them still clung to it where they could. Clung to the memories it evoked, the people it represented.

It was an ache, sharp and biting, but Thomas was learning to distinguish the good aches from the bad.

“What on earth is there to talk about with me and Gally?” Thomas asked, bewildered.

Minho put down the net and met Thomas’s eyes, clearly having decided that they were talking whether Thomas wanted to or not. Frypan probably put him up to it, Thomas decided.

“You’ve been living together for three years, Thomas, you realize that right?”

No, actually, he hadn’t.

What was the point of time when he hadn’t had enough of it when it counted? He and Gally had found their own way of coping, of trying to do more than just exist, because of promises and requests made by the only people who’d _mattered_ to them.

That didn’t mean they were ever going to thrive.

“What’s your point, Min?” Thomas asked.

“Are you two… I mean are you and he…” Minho struggled, once again staring at the net as though it somehow held both the answers Minho wanted and a safe way out of the conversation.

Thomas took mercy on him and stood to walk away, but not without responding.

“He’s not Newt.”

Thomas was almost out of sight of Minho when his friend shouted back at him, “That’s not an answer!”

But it was.

 

 

 

Sometimes, oftentimes, their grief was beyond tears.

It was one such time, Minho and Brenda’s son was two, when things between them actually shifted from their odd codependence into a new form of coping.

Occasionally Thomas, and he was sure Gally, would sit and wonder whether or not it was concerning that so much time had passed since their loves had died and yet they were still barely able to function half of the time. Thomas had officially been without Newt for well over triple the amount of time he’d even known him—and yet his breath still died from the ash in his lungs and his soul was empty and barren without Newt there beside him.

The world around them appeared to have found a way to move on, to thrive, yet there they were.

Stagnant.

Unwilling to let go the way that thriving would demand.

Was it their guilt?

Or were they two broken men so shattered that life itself was meaningless without the person they ached for in their arms?

Thomas knew which answer he thought it was.

Gally had entered the hut with the same desolated look in his eyes that once drove Thomas to push him into the ocean, but they were past that now. Instead he opened his arms and they sat on the ground until Gally used Thomas’s arms as an anchor back to the land of the living, the last place either of them wanted to be, and life entered his eyes once more.

When they cleared and their eyes locked, Thomas remembered a conversation he’d had a long time ago with Minho.

_He’s not Newt._

_That’s not an answer._

His and Gally’s foreheads met and they breathed the same air, both on the precipice of uncharted territory, but ultimately moving towards the same goal.

They’d spoken before, about how they were each jealous of the other in some ways. Thomas had never known the touch of Newt’s lips against his, Gally couldn’t forget the feel of Ben’s.

In that moment Thomas spared another moment to mourn one more first that had been stolen from them, but his neglected heart craved the contact, the intimacy, in a way that couldn’t be explained. Not to replace, never to replace.

Not to move on.

Never to fully heal.

But to hold the place, to keep his heart from closing to everyone around him.

“I’m not Ben,” Thomas whispered roughly, his voice too loud in their small hut on the hill.

“I know,” Gally answered. “I’m not Newt.”

“I know,” Thomas murmured, tears already filling his eyes, but the moment between he and Gally almost felt inevitable. They relied on each other for so much, why not also for this?

They weren't perfect, it wasn't perfect, but it _was_.

And maybe that could be enough, enough to breathe a little longer. To feel another heartbeat underneath their palm and ground themselves in it.

Their first kiss together was soft, but sure. There was no wild passion, no spark that scorched them from fingers to toes. Only the quiet comfort of two men so starved for the affections of those who had passed that it was either accept the affection of a kindred soul or crumple away into the night, to become one with the breeze and be forgotten in the sea.

Still, though, Thomas had to pull away and bury his choked sob in Gally’s shoulder. He could feel Gally shaking as well and wondered if he were to glance at his hands what he would see.

Eventually in the night they shifted in how they held each other in their arms and Thomas could feel in himself his commitment to Newt and the requests in the Letter solidifying into something more.

Something tangible.

Something manageable.

Together, he and Gally could do this. Could make it through life one breakdown at a time until at last they were reunited with the people they could only see in dreams.

It was dark enough, and Thomas was exhausted enough, that if he let his mind drift, he could pretend the arms around him were thinner and paler.

Dotted with moles and scars that Thomas could’ve mapped in his sleep—that he _did_ map in his sleep.

Behind him he felt Gally’s grip relax, his posture shift, and Thomas knew that in their shared dark and empty space in the world, Gally was lost in his memory of Ben.

It was comforting, their shared agony and refusal to let go.

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**Author's Note:**

> So this is the only way I can see Thomas and Gally in a relationship. This is horrible and was a great challenge to write, but I hope at least some of you found some type of beauty in it.
> 
> As always, apologies for typos, I'll do a sweep through and clean it up at some point. <3


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